Mosque attack in Egypt leaves over 200 dead; Erdogan says U.S. will no longer arm Kurds in Syria

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The U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Antonio Guterres have condemned an attack on a mosque in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula which killed 235 people. The council called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. No organization has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. The Sinai region has experienced multiple terrorist attacks since the military, led by President Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, seized control of the government in 2013. Several of the attacks were carried out by the group, Sinai Province, which is affiliated with the Islamic State.

Emmerson Mnangagwa was sworn in as president of Zimbabwe on Friday. The former vice-president was ousted by Robert Mugabe a few weeks ago in a move that precipitated the army to step in and end Mugabe’s 37-year rule. Zimbabweans have been celebrating the end of an era and are optimistic that Mnangagwa will bring about democratic reform.

Ex-Paralympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius’s sentence for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp has been more than doubled. South Africa’s Supreme Court found in favour of the state, whose lawyers argued that his initial six-year sentence was “shockingly lenient.” The court extended Pistorius’s sentence to 15 years, the country’s minimum term for murder, minus the two and a half years already served.

The Slovenian centrist prime minister, Miro Cerar, is facing a motion to be impeached from the country’s right wing opposition, according to The Guardian. Critics in the Slovenian parliament say Cerar has attempted to interfere in the business of the independent judiciary by voicing support for a Syrian man, Ahmad Shamieh, who faces deportation. Janez Janša, a rightwing former prime minister, said his party would seek to impeach Cerar. However the Guardian reports that Cerar has enough support to vote down the motion.

What we’re reading

CNN investigates China’s prisons and allegations of the widespread use of torture against lawyers and human rights activists. Their investigation shows that 265 lawyers have been detained since a crackdown that started last year and is continuing today. — Jack Barton

Martha Lillard spends half of every day with her body encapsulated in a half-century old machine that forces her to breathe. Gizmodo reporter Jennings Brown goes in search of the last people in the United States who still use the iron lung — a negative pressure ventilator. The machines became popular in the in the early 1950s, before polio vaccines were available. As Brown reports, some still rely on the machines to breathe for them, which requires constant upkeep of decades-old technology. — Charles Anderson

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